Negotiation is The Key to Success with Kwame Christian
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Our today’s guest is Kwame Christian, a corporate attorney and the Founder of The American Negotiation Institute. He revels in using psychology to help him build negotiation strategies. But Kwame is primarily a teacher, and is here to share a few rules regarding the art of persuasion.
Getting Started
Negotiation is everywhere. From negotiating our status as kids on the playground all the way to the high-stake business operations, any conversation where you want something is classified as such. But where the opportunities abound, we often pass on them for the fear of entering a conflict.
Precisely these two challenges, the awareness of negotiation situations and overcoming the anxiety thereof, are the pillars towards making you a great negotiator. Once dusted, applying the psychology behind negotiating your status will have an impact on real people and relationships.
Brushing up
Learning the skill of negotiation is of little value if you don’t practice it out in the world. Kwame has a unique approach to keeping himself sharp, it’s called the rejection therapy.
What he suggests doing is deliberately engage in negotiations that you are not likely to have your way. This is a way of flexing the negotiation muscle which sets high goals and gets you comfortable with rejection. Over time. It will the eliminate fear of rejection, the single most toxic reason why you’re not engaging in more fruitful negotiations.
Business and Life
Acknowledging that negotiation situations are all around, private life ones are of a higher stake given that we have more to lose. But engaging in a fruitful negotiating conflict with our closest ones is the only way to find out what’s wrong strengthening the good, or ending the bad relationships.
Up the Ladder
Business too, is a touchy field when it comes to negotiation. If your goal is to, say, negotiate a higher pay, the secret is not to ambush your employer with a direct question, but engage in a series of mini negotiations whereby you’ll ease the impact of the questions once it comes. The ideal strategy would be to ask questions and gather the information on what are the criteria for pay raise, and then go and meet those criteria. Then tactfully present your claim for deserving to climb up the pay ladder.
Success Indicators
Timing
Much of the negotiation results will depend on the timing. The hour needs to be the most practical one, that is, when the person you’re talking to is at their rational best to receive the message.
Body language
Body language is among those indicators that can tell you how the process of negotiation is going. But it can also fool you if you take too much meaning out of too small a sample. Rather than looking for isolated patterns, search for clusters of behavior that happen is succession within a 2-3 seconds span. It’s a great tool, the body language, if that you know how to use it.
Make sure to check out…
Kwame’s Website
Kwame’s Twitter
American Negotiation Institute free guides
Book - Never Split the Difference
Book - Negotiation Genius
